London Children's Film Festival

Caroline McGinn has so far managed to protect her three-year-old from the vulgar excesses of Hollywood

So, would a trip to the London Children’s Film Festival undo all that good work? Do you remember the first time you went to the cinema? I do. It was in the ’80s, in a flea-pit auditorium that doubled as a cut-price carpet showroom. The screen was scratchy; the picture jumped; and the plush was distinctly whiffy. But none of that mattered, it was the story (a tragic, animated tale about love and adventure in the face of danger) which stayed with me.

Of course, they don’t make ’em like ‘Bambi’ any more. One reason, perhaps, why I’ve been wary about exposing my three-year-old son to TV and film. Unlike many of his nursery classmates and the vast majority of the UK population, he’s never been to the cinema or watched
a movie. Call it nostalgia, or call it reasonable caution in the face of Power Rangers, but I’ve watched over his intake like a Luddite. While I’ve never gone as far as machine-breaking (your average toddler doesn’t need help in that respect), the leisure opportunities round our place are mostly made of wood and paper.

Of course, pre-tech paradise can’t last forever. And the London Children’s Film Festival seemed like a good way to introduce the lad to the joys of celluloid without opening the floodgates on kiddie video in all its robotic-psychotic, world-dominating bloodlust. (I know what I’m talking about here, I have a six-year-old nephew.) Clearly, we’d have to make about 100 years of cultural progress first. But, after a week of intensive training (ie 30 minutes of ‘The Sound of Music’ every day), we were ready.

The LCFF shows international and national films for kids. It’s imaginatively structured, with plenty of workshops: when we arrived, for the new ‘Bee Movie’, the place was a-swarm with busy yellow and black-striped youngsters sticking wings on each other. Some parents were having so much fun with the stapler, you wondered who it was there for.

Sadly, there was no such ambivalence when it came to DreamWorks’ new film, which is cynically over-pitched at adults. The story, like its misfit hero Barry the Bee, buzzes around inconsequentially all over the place. (My son described it as ‘a bee, and some other bees, and then lots of things did come along and bash them’, a devastatingly accurate plot-summary.)

It’s a shame: animations like ‘Shrek’, and ‘Antz’ manage to combine wised-up wisecracks for the grown-ups with cute pastel-shaded cartoons for the kids. But ‘Bee Movie’ crashes adult and kids’ worlds clumsily into each other. Take the physiologically challenged romance between a worker bee and a human florist (seductively voiced by Renée Zellweger). Or the weirdly unwholesome fantasy scenes (in which the bee imagines her dying in a fiery plane-crash). Or even the references to ‘The Graduate’, which do nothing for the kids and not much for the parents. Much of the animation looks blandly produced by DreamWorks drones. And co-writer Jerry Seinfeld’s sense of humour sounds offbeat in the weak puns, the urbane chat about coffee and jazz and the softcore identity politics (‘Is she Bee-ish?’ Barry’s mother asks about his new girlfriend).

Incidentally, the fact that ‘bee’ rhymes with ‘wee’ was one of the few naff puns to escape the writers, though it didn’t escape the audience. After a few minutes of giant humans swatting and yelling ‘A bee! A bee!’, there was a mini-exodus, as over-extended bladders picked up on the subliminal message.

We left early too, not to use the loo, but to de-glaze from all the crash-bang-wallop special effects. And I was left wondering about the experience. It was undeniably much more high-tech, sensational (and cleaner) than that old carpet showroom. But I’m afraid I don’t think my son will remember his first movie in the same way that I do.

The London Children's Film Festival runs until November 25.